Heartwarming / Penn & Teller: Fool Us

• In general, if an act doesn't fool Penn & Teller, they still find something about it to compliment the performer(s) on, and they give constructive criticism to everyone that performs.
• In one episode, when Penn and Teller are performing a trick of their own at the end, Penn establishes that Teller (who is supposedly doing a card trick) has not really lost the card picked by a woman in the audience in the deck. Then he cuts the deck himself and asks her again if she is now satisfied the card is lost. When she responds yes, he shouts, "Wrong! No matter how nice I am to you, or how mean I pretend to be to this man here, my first allegiance in the world is to my partner!" Despite that this was all part of the act and the rest of the routine is about Penn bullying Teller to the point that Teller stabs him through the hand with a knife, that one line is clearly actually true and really sums up the level of trust involved in such a close, lasting professional relationship.
• Another episode has a fifteen-year-old boy, Daniel Kramer, performing. Though he doesn't fool them, Penn's speech after his performance is pure warm fuzzies.
• One aspect of Fool Us that might be overlooked is the fact that while Penn and Teller might not be fooled by a contestant's act, they are very careful not to reveal the secret of the trick to the audience, instead phrasing it with codewords that those in-the-know would pick up on, but not the layperson.
  • One specific example is Reuben Moreland, who had a variation of a trick involving dice that Penn admitted he was not a fan of, but loved how Moreland gave it his own twist. Declaring that Moreland "should do this trick for the rest of your life. Take it to your grave," rather than say out loud how they knew the trick, Teller wrote it down, and after Moreland acknowledged that they were right, Teller destroyed the paper he had written on.
• Quite a few of the acts that appear on Fool Us admit that they probably have no chance of fooling Penn & Teller, and are simply content to appear on the show and perform for the duo, who are often named as an inspiration for getting into the business. For their part, Penn & Teller are not at all shy about doling out the praise if they like the act, whether they're fooled or not.
  • One act in particular had the magician transform a $1 bill to a $100 - which he then let the audience assistant keep, a feat that Penn openly acknowledged as being extremely classy.
• One episode had a husband and wife mentalist duo, The Evasons. Their act involved the husband taking personal items from the audience and asking the wife to guess them. During the summation, Penn told a story about how he and Teller had worked their asses off for years to do a similar act, and they finally accomplished it... on a deck of cards. These people were able to, it seemed, guess anything. Though they didn't fool them, Penn said that he admired both the mental gymnastics involved to pull it off and their dedication to the old-school method rather than resorting to cheats like hidden mics.
• Magician Tony Clark became obsessed with power lifting as a teen, eventually abusing steroids and having high blood pressure by the age of 20. Remembering his childhood love for magic, he happened upon a magic convention and met Slydini, one of the greatest magicians of the 20th century. Slydini ended up mentoring Clark until Slydini's passing, an act which Clark claims saved him from further drug abuse and a potential early death. Clark dedicated his original act, finished after Slydini's passing, and performance on Fool Us to the late magician (who, Clark noted, originally had a stage name of Tony Fool'em). In the end, Clark's act fooled Penn & Teller. Shedding tears, Clark thanked the duo, held his winner's statue skyward and quietly left the stage.
• When Ryan Hayashi fooled the duo with his stellar Coin Matrix act, he broke down into a heartwarmingly emotional scene for having fooled his two idols who inspired him to start performing magic.
• Another notable aspect is that Penn & Teller aren't afraid to admit when they are wrong. When Alexandra Duvivier performed, she misunderstood Penn's coded conversation and said they got her method. Teller checked backstage, realized they were wrong, and let Penn know so Alexandra could get her trophy.
• Magician and former con-man Aiden Sinclair turned things around after Penn showed kindness toward him on the street. Even though he doesn’t get a trophy, Penn still gets up to shake his hand.

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